Thank you, Mr. Mel. So often the ending is not too happy for these children, and yet it can be, especially when both the child AND the caregivers (adoptive and/or fostering) get the help and direction they need to understand why children respond the way they do, and how ‘just giving love’ isn’t always automatically understood or accepted by children who literally don’t know what it is or what to do with it. Help and healing are absolutely possible, even if they take tenacity, hope, and gentle determination on all parts.

I have no words to respond adequately to this exquisite expression of the infantile and nonverbal experience of neglect. Is it any wonder that many children adopted from repressive states, warehoused until matched with loving families who wish so much to love them, act out and aren’t receptive, yet. Add to this unconscionable beginning those children whose genetic endowment includes mental illness, addiction, or even in some cases sociopathy and the future for them is uncertain.

Great comment, thank you! Yes, neglect and lack of secure base aren’t relegated only to those raised in orphanages, but can manifest in households where caregivers are unavailable (e.g. struggle with addictions, are too ill or too overwhelmed to care for the children, are themselves lost to unresolved childhood trauma fogs, etc). Children will do what they can, which often is to remove themselves mentally from the unbearable. Healing requires not only love, but also the skills to understand and address the lasting legacy of early deprivation and despair, and the pain of being rejected (for the adoptive parents by the child, too …) and all it brings up even in the most resilient in us. Uncertain future, yes, but possibility abounds. All the more reason for caregivers to be given support by professionals who understand complex trauma and its aftermath, as well as the paths to is healing. Thanks, my friend!